The Evil Eye; Or, The Black Spector Part 59

There was an earnestness and force of truth in what the generous young tory said that could not be mistaken. He arose, and was about to take his leave, when he said,--

"Miss Riddle, I understand he is about to be married to you to-morrow.

Should he become your husband, he is safe from my hand--and that on your account; but as it may not yet be too late to spake, I warn you against his hypocrisy and villany--against the man who destroyed Grace Davoren--who would have killed Miss Goodwin with his Evil Eye, in order to get back the property which his uncle left her, and who would have poisoned his own brother out of his way bekase his mother told him she had changed her mind in leaving it to him (Woodward), and came to the resolution of leaving it to his brother, and that was the raison why he attempted to poison him. All these things have been proved, and I have raison to believe that he will sleep--if sleep he can--in Waterford jail before to-morrow mornin'. But," he added, with a look which was so replete with vengeance and terror, that it perfectly stunned the girl, "perhaps he won't, though. It is likely that the fate of Grace Davoren will prevent him from it."

He did not give her time to reply, but instantly disappeared, and left her in a state of mind which our readers may very well understand.

She immediately went to her uncle's library, where the following brief dialogue occurred:

"Uncle, this marriage must not and shall not take place."

"What!" replied the peer; "then he is none of the twelve apostles."

"You are there mistaken," said she; "he is one of them. Remember Judas."

"Judas! What the deuce are you at, my dear niece?"

"Why, that he is a most treacherous villain: that's what I'm at," and her face became crimson with indignation.

"But what's in the wind? Don't keep me in a state of suspense. Judas!

Confound it, what a comparison! Well, I perceive you are not disposed to become Mrs. Judas. You know me, however, well enough: I'm not going to press you to it. Do you think, my dear niece, that Judas was a gentleman?"

"Precisely such a gentleman, perhaps, as Mr. Woodward is."

"And you think he would betray Christ?"

"He would poison his brother, uncle, because he stands between him and his mother's property, which she has recently expressed her intention of leaving to that brother--a fact which awoke something like compa.s.sion in my breast for Woodward."

"Well, then, kick him to h.e.l.l, the scoundrel. I liked the fellow in the beginning, and, indeed, all along, because he had badgered me so beautifully,--which I thought few persons had capacity to,--and in consequence, I entertained a high opinion of his intellect, and be hanged to him; kick him to h.e.l.l, though."

"Well, my dear lord and uncle, I don't think I would be capable of kicking him so far; nor do I think it will be at all necessary, as my opinion is, that he will be able to reach that region without any a.s.sistance."

"Come, that's very well said, at all events--one of your touchers, as I call them. There, then, is an end to the match and marriage, and so be it."

She here detailed at further length, the conversation which she had with Shawn-na-Middogue; mentioned the fact, which had somehow become well known, of his having wrought the ruin of Grace Davoren, and concluded by stating that, notwithstanding his gentlemanly manners and deportment, he was unworthy either the notice or regard of any respectable female.

"Well," said the peer, "from, all you have told me I must say you have had a narrow escape; I did suspect him to be a fortune-hunter; but then who the deuce can blame a man for striving to advance himself in life?

However, let there be an end to it, and you must only wait until a better man comes."

"I a.s.sure you, my dear uncle, I am in no hurry; so let that be your comfort so far as I am concerned."

"Well, then," said the peer, "I shall write to him to say that the marriage, in consequence of what we have heard of his character, is off."

"Take whatever steps you please," replied his admirable niece; "for most a.s.suredly, so far as I am concerned, it is off. Do you imagine, uncle, that I could for a moment think of marrying a seducer and a poisoner?"

"It would be a very queer thing if you did," replied her uncle; "but was it not a fortunate circ.u.mstance that you came to discover his real character in time to prevent you from becoming the wife of such a scoundrel?"

"It was the providence of G.o.d," said his niece, "that would not suffer the innocent to become a.s.sociated with the guilty."

Greatrakes, in the meantime, was hard at work. He and the other magistrates had collected evidence, and received the informations against Woodward, the herbalist, and the mysterious individual who was in the habit of appearing about the Haunted House as the _Shan-dhinne-dhuv_, or the Black Spectre. Villany like this cannot be long concealed, and will, in due time, come to light.

During the dusk of the evening preceding Woodward's intended marriage, an individual came to Mr. Lindsay's house and requested to see Mr.

Woodward. That gentleman came down, and immediately recognized the person who had, for such a length of time, frightened the neighborhood as the _Shan-dhinne-dhuv_ or the Black Spectre. He was shown into the parlor, and, as there was no one present, the following dialogue took place, freely and confidentially, between them:--

"You must fly," said the Spectre, or, in other words, the conjurer, whom we have already described,--"you must fly, for you are to be arrested this night. Our establishment for the forgery of bad notes must also be given up, and the Haunted House must be deserted. The magistrates, somehow, have smelled out the truth, and we must change our lodgings. We dodged them pretty well, but, after all, these things can't last long.

On to-morrow night I bid farewell to the neighborhood; but you cannot wait so long, because on this very night you are to be arrested. It is very well that you sent Grace Davoren, at my suggestion, from the Haunted House to what is supposed to be the haunted cottage, in the mountains, where Nannie Morrissy soon joined her. I supplied them with provisions, and had a bed and other articles brought to them, according to your own instructions, and I think that, for the present, the safest place of concealment will be there."

Woodward became terribly alarmed. It was on the eve of his marriage, and the intelligence almost drove him into distraction.

"I will follow your advice," said he, "and will take refuge in what is called the haunted cottage, for this night."

His mysterious friend now left him, and Woodward prepared to seek the haunted cottage in the mountains. Poor Grace Davoren was in a painful and critical condition, but Woodward had engaged Caterine Collins to attend to her: for what object, will soon become evident to our readers.

Woodward, after night had set in,--it was a mild night with faint moonlight,--took his way towards the cottage that was supposed to be haunted, and which, in those days of witchcraft and. superst.i.tion, n.o.body would think of entering. We have already described it, and that must suffice for our readers. On entering a dark, but level moor, he was startled by the appearance of the Black Spectre, which, as on two occasions before, pointed its middogue three times at his heart. He rushed towards it, but on arriving at the spot he could find nothing. It had vanished, and he was left to meditate on it as best he might.

We now pa.s.s to the haunted cottage itself. There lay Grace Davoren, after having given birth to a child; there she lay--the victim of the seducer, on the very eve of dissolution, and beside her, sitting on the bed, the unfortunate Nannie Morrissy, now a confirmed and dying maniac.

"Grace," said Nannie, "you, like me, were ruined."

"I was," replied Grace, in a voice scarcely audible.

"Ay, but you didn't murder your father, though, as I did; that's one advantage I have over you--ha! ha! ha!"

"I'm not so sure of that, Nannie," replied the dying girl; "but where's my baby?"

"O! yes, you have had a baby, but Caterine Collins took it away with her."

"My child! my child! where is my child?" she exclaimed in a low, but husky voice; "where's my child? and besides, ever since I took that bottle she gave me I feel deadly sick."

"Will I go for your father and mother--but above all things for your father? But then if he punished the villain that ruined you and brought disgrace upon your name, he might be hanged as mine was."

"Ah! Nannie," replied poor Grace; "my father won't die of the gallows; but he will of a broken heart."

"Better to be hanged," said the maniac, whose reason, after a lapse of more than a year, was in some degree returning, precisely as life was ebbing out, "bekase, thank G.o.d, there's then an end to it."

"I agree with you, Nannie, it might be only a long life of suffering; but I wouldn't wish to see my father hanged."

"Do you know," said Nannie, relapsing into a deeper mood of her mania,--"do you know that when I saw my father last he wouldn't nor didn't spake to me? The house was filled with people, and my little brother Frank--why now isn't it strange that I feel somehow as if I will never wash his face again nor comb his white head in order to prepare him for ma.s.s?--but whisper, Grace, sure then I was innocent and had not met the destroyer."

The two unhappy girls looked at each other, and if ever there was a gaze calculated to wring the human heart with anguish and with pity, it was that gaze. Both of them were, although unconsciously, on the very eve of dissolution, and it would seem as if a kind of presentiment of death had seized upon both at the same time.

"Nannie," said Grace, "do you know that I'm afeard we're both goin' to die?"

"And why are you afeard of it?" asked Nannie. "Many a time I would 'a given the world to die."

"Why," replied Grace, who saw the deep shadows of death upon her wild, pale, but still beautiful countenance,--"why Nannie, you have your wish--you are dying this moment."

Just as Grace spoke the unfortunate girl seemed as if she had been stricken by a spasm of the heart. She gave a slight start--turned up her beautiful, but melancholy eyes to heaven, and exclaimed, as if conscious of the moment that had come,--